A 79-GHz 2 × 2 MIMO PMCW Radar SoC in 28-nm CMOS

In this paper, the concept of phase modulated MIMO radars is explained and demonstrated with a 28-nm CMOS fully integrated 79-GHz radar SoC. It includes two transmitters, two receivers, and the mm-wave frequency generation. The receivers' outputs are digitized by on-chip ADCs and processed by a custom designed digital core, which performs correlation and accumulation with a pseudorandom sequence used in transmission. The SoC consumes 1 W to achieve 7.5 cm range resolution. A module with antennas allows for 5° resolution over ±60° elevation and azimuth scan in 2 × 2 code domain MIMO operation. A 4 × 4 MIMO system is also demonstrated by means of two SoCs mounted on the same module.